The Best of Martin Fowler
10+ most popular Martin Fowler articles, as voted by our community.
Author on Software Development. Works for Thoughtworks. Also hikes, watches theater, and plays modern board games. He/him. @mfowler@toot.thoughtworks.com
Martin Fowler on Devops
Compliance in a DevOps Culture
A DevOps Compliance culture can yield enormous benefits provided the strategy is tailored to the organization.
Martin Fowler on Distributed Systems
How to Move Beyond a Monolithic Data Lake to a Distributed Data Mesh
There are problems with the centralized data lake. A future data mesh needs domains, self-service platforms, and product thinking.
Martin Fowler on Microservices
MonolithFirst
Going directly to a microservices architecture is risky, so consider building a monolithic system first. Split to microservices when, and if, you need it.
How to break a Monolith into Microservices
A guide to the common steps we've observed in breaking a monolithic application up into microservices
Martin Fowler on Programming
On Pair Programming
A guide to effective pair-programming
«best programs and designs are done by pairs, because you can criticise each other, and find each others errors, and use the best ideas.»
Martin Fowler on Remote Work
Remote versus Co-located Work
Remote work takes different forms, varying trade-offs and techniques to make it work. Most people are more effective when co-located, but you can get better people if you support remote working
Martin Fowler on Software Engineering
Maximizing Developer Effectiveness
To be successful at digital transformation you need to optimize the key feedback loops in your software engineering organization
Patterns for Managing Source Code Branches
Mainline, Feature Branching, Continuous Integration, Release Branch and a clutch of other handy patterns.
Martin Fowler on Unit Testing
Goto Fail, Heartbleed, and Unit Testing Culture
Mike Bland explains how to create a unit-testing culture in an organization with the example of his experience at Google. Such a culture could have prevented bugs like goto fail and heartbleed
Martin Fowler on Visual Design
Patterns of Distributed Systems
A catalog of patterns to better understand, communicate, and teach the design of distributed systems
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
Software Architecture Guide
Software Architecture is the important aspects of a software system's internal design, usually its major components and aspects that are hard to change.
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks 5 links from around the web that make you smarter, tailored to your interests. is one of more than 10k sources we monitor.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets 5 links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, add to reading list, save to «Made me smarter», «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
200k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.